Five Ways Wilson Could Have Reacted
by murderofonerose
Summary: Everything House does is based on other peoples’ reactions. Why would that be any less true when he’s around Wilson? House/Wilson


**Warning:** Contains slash-if-you-squint  
**Pairing:** House/Wilson  
**Spoilers:** 4.03 (97 Seconds)  
**Word Count:** 2168  
**Disclaimer:** These characters are not mine, I make no money, and so on. This is the first actual fanfiction I ever wrote. It's also written in first person, which I don't usually do.

* * *

**Five Ways Wilson Could Have Reacted, and One Way He Didn't**

* * *

I opened my eyes, and immediately heard, "You're an idiot. You nearly killed yourself."

Well, I'd expected that. It took me a second to find him against the backdrop of generic hospital room. "That was the whole idea," I rasped.

Wilson's hair wasn't combed and he was wearing different clothes. I'd known he had gone back to his hotel room already, but it was interesting that he returned to the hospital looking so uncharacteristically rumpled. There was a coffee cup from the cafeteria downstairs on the bed tray, and his hands on either side, gripping the edges of the tray as he leaned on it.

His grip on the bed tray tightened. "You _wanted_ to kill yourself?" he asked incredulously.

"I wanted to _nearly_ kill myself," I corrected, rolling my eyes. How could he have known me for this long and not learned how to figure out which words should be emphasized? I looked up at the ceiling and tried to reorient myself; I needed to know what had happened while I'd been unconscious. Wilson looked like a regular person instead of the head of oncology without his lab coat and I figured that in a hospital gown I probably looked a lot like some of my patients, but we were both still doctors. "Is he… better?"

Wilson sighed and looked down. "No, but he doesn't have cancer. We think it might be eosinophilic pneumonia." His eyes snapped back up and I groaned inwardly; he was wearing his lecture expression. "Maybe you didn't want to die," he said sharply, "but you didn't care if you lived?"

"_You_ insisted that I needed to see for myself."

He let go of the tray and paced to the side of the bed, looking as if he'd hoped that wouldn't come up. How could he say something like _you don't know there's nothing, you've never been there_ to me and not expect me to bring it up? Especially after testing that theory. He should know better than that. He usually _did_ know better than that. Why was this different? I squinted at him, trying to discern what was in his expression other than annoyance. The best way to see was to change the subject, throw him off a little— My left hand twinged, reminding me why I was in a hospital bed. "Was he discharged?" I asked.

"No, he's dying." There: a flash of remembered panic as Wilson yo-yoed between the two separate conversations we seemed to be having at once, and _that_ was even more interesting than his hair and clothes. "You've already _had_ two near death experiences!"

Interesting or not, he wasn't following me. I shook my head. "Not that guy, the… guy in the car accident. The knife. I…" My fingers twitched, remembering the feel of the knife handle before the flash of electricity burned into my palm and propelled me back from the wall. I looked the other way, catching the surprise on his face out of the corner of my eye. "I need to talk to him."

Wilson's eyebrows scrunched together as he figured out what I was talking about. "He… died almost an hour ago. Apparently it's bad to electrocute yourself within days of suffering massive internal injuries."

Well that was disappointing. I let my eyes drift closed.

A slight pause, and then Wilson asked, "Why did you need to talk to him?" I heard him lean slightly on the last word, a tell. "Did you… see something?"

I opened my eyes wide and examined the ceiling. There was no point in talking about what I had seen, because there was nothing to talk about. Literally. "Eosinophilic pneumonia," I mumbled, opening my eyes wide and examining the ceiling.

"House?" he asked. "What did you see?"

Was that… _concern_ in his voice? About what? I was fine. Was he actually upset that I didn't want to tell him? "Nothing," I said, still not looking at him. "Whose idea was that?"

"Brennan." I could practically hear him putting his hands on his hips. Wilson was so predictable about some things. "Nothing, you don't want to talk about it, or nothing…?"

"Which one is Brennan?" I interrupted sarcastically. "Is he the ridiculously _old_ guy?"

Contrary to popular belief, I actually did know the names of my employees. It was just so much fun to mess with people by pretending I didn't. Usually that didn't bother Wilson; he was used to it. But instead of rolling his eyes and shrugging it off as usual, he jumped on it. "House, you've got to talk about this."

That was a dumb thing to say. No one _has_ to talk about anything. I held up my left hand, inspecting it. The burn covered my palm and fingers, but that's what pain meds were for. Not an exciting diagnosis, and I was already on the treatment. My patient, however… "If it's aggressive enough," I muttered, clenching my hand experimentally, "it might have gotten past the steroids. Start him on cyclophosmide." I let my arm fall back to its resting position on the bed, grimacing. Never let it be said that I regret my decisions, but collateral damage is a bitch.

"I already did. Just looking at you hurts."

There was no pause, no transition. My eyes darted up to his face as he turned to reach for my chart.

What was he doing here? It was late. He'd already gone home for the day, as much as a permanent resident in a hotel can. If it wasn't cancer than he wasn't even a consult on the case anymore. Friend or not, why did he bother to come if he was just going to lecture me?

He snapped the pen off the clipboard and started writing. "I'm going to order up some extra pain meds."

This was Wilson in his element: taking care of people. Taking care of me, which I had to admit was kind of a full time job. And even though it didn't make any sense that he was here now, taking care of me even though he was angry at me for being an idiot, I had expected it. I watched him for a moment, considering. Why was he there? Why did he care?

There was only one way to tell for sure.

"I love you," I said, and waited for his reaction.

* * *

I.

"…I love you."

Wilson sighed lightly and half-nodded in acknowledgement. A second later he did a spectacular double take; his eyebrows nearly achieved escape velocity. "What?"

I raised an eyebrow of my own; he clearly thought I was messing with him, and if that's what he expected I could pull that off because it was the kind of thing I did all the time. "Nothing. Keep writing, Boy Wonder."

He gave me an impatient look, but went back to adjusting my meds without comment.

* * *

II.

"…I love you."

Wilson sighed and half-nodded in acknowledgement as he finished scribbling the change of meds. "Drugs aren't a great basis for that."

Ouch. I hadn't expected that response, at least not off the top of his head. A little of the hurt might have shown on my face, but I quickly covered it by giving him a mocking look and pretending that he was predictable. "Well, I figured if I actually said thank you you'd drop your pen."

His eyebrows twitched in disapproval. "Considerate of you."

I glanced at my burnt hand again and waggled my fingers at him. "Thanks. I try." And it hurt, but that's what the meds were for.

* * *

III.

"…I love you."

Wilson half-nodded as he finished writing. "Yeah," he said with a sigh, "I can tell."

I gave him an impatient look, annoyed that he didn't seem to be listening. "Seriously."

"Yeah, House," he said, sounding tired. "I know."

Why was he treating me like I was an eight-year-old? I'm not _quite_ that irresponsible. Maybe nine or ten. "No," I whined, "seriously."

Why was it so hard to get him to look at me?

He set the clipboard on the bed tray, glaring off somewhere in the direction of my feet. "And you decide to tell me now? After pulling this? Great timing. You nearly _died_."

And then I got it: he was hurt. Maybe because I'd tried to say it was his idea, maybe because I'd paged my bitchiest employee to witness me jam the knife into an electrical socket in my office and get my heart started again, or maybe because I'd only wanted to talk to the dead idiot from the clinic who'd done it first. Either way, I didn't know what I could do about it now.

I looked up at the ceiling again, mumbling, "Sorry, I knew I should have waited until after the drum roll cue." He didn't answer, and I let my eyes slide closed. "Forget it."

* * *

IV.

"…I love you."

Wilson half-nodded in acknowledgement. His lips twitched, as if he almost considered saying something back, but he continued writing with a softening expression. Maybe electrocuting myself was a dumb idea, but apparently he was willing to forgive me without much of an argument. That in itself made me feel as if I should be a little bit more honest with him, concede something in return. I'm a man of principle, but this is _Wilson_ we're talking about. He's the only person I ever let wear me down.

"The thing about dying," I said evenly, meeting his eyes, "is that it's nowhere near as interesting as being alive."

He put the clipboard and pen down on the bed tray, a tiny grin on his face. That probably would have irked me if it had any hint of victory, but it was all fondness. How he could get so frustrated with me and still be able to grin like that I'd never know. "So I can trust your aversion to boredom to keep you from doing anything like that again?"

"Maybe. I might need a little more incentive than that," I joked, deadpan as I shifted my bad leg and faked a wince. "I am in a lot of pain, you know."

My leg was fine, or between the distracting pain from the burn and the drugs as fine as it ever was, but Wilson took me seriously. Suddenly very grim, he leaned forward and put a hand on my wrist. "Don't joke about that," he said reproachfully.

I felt one corner of my mouth jerk upwards, amused and oddly flattered by his very Wilson way of expressing concern. My eyebrows arched up in an uncharacteristically mild expression – if I had to later, I could blame it on the drugs – and I settled back into the pillow. "Okay."

* * *

V.

"…I love you."

Wilson sighed lightly and half-nodded in acknowledgement. A second later he did a spectacular double take; his eyebrows nearly achieved escape velocity. "What?"

I raised an eyebrow of my own and gave him a droll look; he clearly expected me to be messing with him, and I could pull that off because it was the kind of thing I did all the time. "Nothing. Keep writing, Boy Wonder."

He gave me a quizzical look at the word _nothing_. "What did you mean by that?" he asked slowly, as if speaking any faster would make me less inclined to explain myself. "Do you…"

Instead of replying, I closed my eyes.

"It's not nothing," he told me. Sounded as if he was guessing, though.

"…I didn't see anything," I said finally.

Even though I couldn't see him, I was pretty sure he rolled his eyes. Or maybe put his hands on his hips again. Or maybe those gestures had nothing to do with it, and entirely to do with some thing he always did with his voice: the classic Wilson-does-not-approve tone. "We're not talking about that anymore," he said firmly.

I shrugged. "You wanted to know."

There was a pause. "Wait, what are _you_ talking about?" he asked, sounding confused.

To be honest I was puzzled too, and that was obviously a tell but I wasn't sure of what. Still, when I opened my eyes and asked, "If you can confuse the two so easily, do I really have to answer that question?" and he colored faintly, I decided that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd figure it out eventually, anyway. "Good," I said as if I'd received an answer, "because I'm kind of tired." I closed my eyes again, then opened one to peek at him. "You can stay if you want."

It was another tell that he did.

* * *

"…I love you."

Wilson's eyebrows twitched, and he sighed lightly and half-nodded in acknowledgement but said nothing, even after he finished writing.

It was disappointing that he hadn't reacted. Sometimes he was capable of lying to me; I had absolutely no idea what he was thinking. After a minute or two of fruitless speculation I drifted back to sleep, resolving drowsily to return to the puzzle later.


End file.
